Wildfire Impacts on California’s Agricultural Sector
California Fire Science Consortium
February 25, 2pm ET
Abstract: Wildfire smoke is becoming a challenge for California’s agricultural regions, affecting both crop production and the communities that sustain it. This talk examines how wildfire and wildfire smoke are reshaping risks to California agriculture, using the wine grape sector as a central case study. Evidence from wine grape yields suggests that wildfire smoke is becoming an important driver of crop productivity, shifting crop yield modeling from being primarily climate driven to models that incorporate wildfire smoke to accurately capture trends. As wildfire activity intensifies under climate change, how will these crop yield impacts evolve under future climate scenarios through the end of the century? At the same time, these impacts can have wide reaching impacts on agricultural communities that work and sustain our food systems. Understanding these risks also depends on the structure of existing data systems, which shape what aspects of agricultural life are visible and measurable. Commonly used federal datasets often overlook features such as seasonal labor, employment variability, and access to health care, complicating efforts to fully characterize wildfire impacts on agricultural communities. This talk will address how together these impacts underscore the growing links between wildfire, agricultural production, and the communities that sustain California’s agriculture.
Presented by: Astrid Hoefler, PhD
Astrid Hoefler is an environmental researcher whose work examines how climate change and wildfire smoke affect crop productivity, labor, and resilience in California’s agricultural systems. She recently completed her PhD in Environmental Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz, where she focused on understanding how increasing wildfire activity and smoke exposure influence agricultural outcomes in the wine grape sector. Her work integrates climate science and agricultural data to better understand climate driven risks and variability across regions. Astrid is interested in applied research that supports climate adaptation, wildfire resilience, and decision making at the intersection of science and policy.
